Quick Update

I must apologize yet again for not being as active on the blogosphere as I would like to be. I spent the past 10 days in northern California defending my master’s thesis, which I have written about here.

A thesis defense is an intense oral presentation of one’s work. Once a graduate student has completed their master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation, they then have to discuss their research in front of a group of faculty members – as well as anyone else who happens to be there. The student must then answer a slew of questions from the attendees, and try to not look terrible while doing so. Afterwards, the student must complete a number of post-defense edits that their graduate committee (the faculty members who oversee their research) gives them.

That is what I was doing all last week. Unfortunately, I was not able to defend my thesis until five days before the submission deadline. I therefore had to scramble to complete all of my edits on time, or risk not graduating until the Spring. I was not ‘down’ for that, as the cool kids might say.

However, I do have a series of fascinating posts just over the horizon. I will thus have more original material to share on this blog before long.

Thanks Takami! My faculty were actually pretty easy on me, although I’ve seen other candidates get grilled more heavily. What made my defense hard was just the fact that it happened a mere five days before the ultimate deadline.

Thanks David! All should go well in regards to graduation – everything is mostly in order. But relax? What does that mean? I’m actually anxious to get started on a few projects that I’ve had to put on hold these past few months.

I’ll let you all know how the mental breakdown goes when it inevitably hits.

Well, my program’s just a master’s one. But it seems like there’s always another set of paperwork to do before you can actually finish, so I’ve given up on trying to figure out when my graduation date will be.

Haha, there’s a reason it took me an extra semester to finish my master’s; I’m very good at making things harder than they need to be.

The Belize trip wasn’t sponsored by my program, but the first half of it was made in conjunction with my school’s Anthropology program – which I was not formally a part of. The tuition for that half of the trip (since it was through my school, I had to pay tuition) was paid for via a GoFundMe campaign, and the rest all came from me.

Haha thanks, perhaps I’ll be proud of me too at some point. In many respects it’s a shame that my jaguar project didn’t work out, but it’s partly beneficial as well. Had I ended up doing my thesis in Belize like I’d hoped, I probably wouldn’t have graduated for at least another year. My finances would’ve therefore been even more ruined than they are now, with no realistic way of ever getting them under control.

Well there’s always your PhD. Opportunities don’t always go away forever just because we weren’t able to grab it at that moment it came knocking. Keep looking for a way and eventually you’ll either find one or create one. 😊

Gah, I wish I could be more active on Twitter too! I suppose I’m comparing my current blogging activity with what it was like before I started grad school, when I spent 2+ hours reading and commenting on other people’s posts every day. Oh well, life changes.

And don’t you worry either! Your education and social life > blogging.

Hope your thesis defending went well!
I had friends who left some of the editing for the last minute! Literally. They would be doing their last edits, waiting for their roll call, while other kids were giving their presentation in the room.
Sometimes we had to even help them out with their slides, even if it wasn’t our project! But that was the fun.

My thesis defense went very well, thank you! I only left my edits for the last minute because I had to, since I wasn’t ready to defend until right before the end of the semester. But it’s all done now!

I can only imagine how stressed your friends were, having to make edits as the other students were presenting!